Planned growth starts with forming a vision and identifying the steps necessary to achieve it. But the business environment will undoubtedly change as time passes and you implement your plan. Growth plans have to be balanced against the need to maintain profitability as well as the certainty of the unexpected emergency. Once you have a solid vision for your business, you need to get key decision makers on board with managing short-term budget effects in order to realize the long-term value of solid growth. It almost sounds easy when we say it in a blog like this, but it can be the hardest part of getting a business to break through to the next level.

Few things can match the excitement of the first day of business. For many people, it’s the realization of a career-long dream to be their own boss. Even for the serial entrepreneur who has been through the process multiple times, there’s still an adrenaline rush when the website goes live and/or the doors unlock and all of the planning and preparation comes together.

Just about every business that creates a business plan will project some growth. While it’s important to set an intention around growth at the start of the year, it takes more than just a number in a forecast to successfully grow throughout the year. In many cases, it will take new money to make new money. Does your business plan account for the funding necessary to support your growth projections?

I don’t know if it hit everybody this way, but when I flipped my calendar over to June and realized that the next time I turned a page half of 2017 would be gone, I was a little shocked. We’re heading into a key time of the calendar year, when executives look at the 6-month numbers and start to get a clearer picture about the forecast for the end of the year. It’s time to ask some important questions about your first-half results and your second-half projections:

If you ask a dozen executives if their goals for their companies include long-term growth, you would probably get a unanimous “Yes” from the group. If you then asked them to define what long-term growth looks like at their companies, you might get a dozen different answers. In order to prepare a business for long-term growth, the first step is to understand what exactly needs to grow.

I was talking with a CFO recently, and he shared with me how hard it is for his company to hire and keep qualified employees. He asked me how HORNE has managed to establish and grow a loyal, talented workforce, and I told him about some of our initiatives to develop our team members and help them to grow personally and professionally. His comments raised an important question. Are you finding it harder to recruit and retain qualified, talented employees?

If you follow professional football, you know how valuable a left tackle is to a team. One of his key responsibilities is to protect a right-handed quarterback’s back or “blindside.” These players are so valuable that they command salaries second only to the quarterback.

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